Articles

Sullivan joins, perhaps unknowingly, the female gothic tradition. The cause of terror in Sullivan’s novel is not from the supernatural, but rather the female mind, familial horrors, and the loss of control. While working within themes of feminism, patriarchal control, and mental illness, Sullivan’s commentary is never overt. Haunting prose and intelligent twists haunt and thrill, while her lyrical prose simultaneously adds an elegance and beauty to every scene and character.

At heart, I am an adventurer. I climb, I ski, I sea kayak. The outdoor, natural world is my religion. I pray to the snow gods, I sacrifice skis, mountains are my temples, water is my verse.

I’ve learned that by framing what you see, choosing how and what you impart to the viewer or reader, you make the work of art.

In his debut collection of short fiction, John Matthew Fox is a master inspector. He offers his readers a journey through nine stories, a look through nine windows, all bound together by Fox’s insightful and unflinching exploration of religion.

It’s not about who is the first to publish; it’s who is the last one standing.

Writing is that trifecta between love, obsession, and need for me. I write because something inside howls until I do. I evolve every day when it comes to writing: learning something new about myself, the world, and words all the time. I guess I am always molding and molded-from as an artist. Lots of societal questions right now, political and historical happenings shaping the world—some terrifying and some inspiring.

My house appears to be the main character in my work. It provides a fund of images and activities, from dust falling to water boiling. Memory is another great source for my writing—memory of travels, raising children, childhood. And I confess, in spite of myself, I’m frequently drawn to loss, an impulse that I’ve stopped fighting.

As we age, we lose the ability to hear certain tones and pitches (remember when everyone was obsessed with that ringtone with a frequency so high apparently only young people and animals could hear it?). I found this explanation totally heartbreaking. I began to think of it as that tone’s final song, or the last echo of it making itself known before it burns out.

Ideally, the writer is one upon whom nothing is lost, as Henry James once said. We are the antennae of the world. Obviously, something happens in the soul that seeks an echo. When the echo is heard, the poem begins.

Maya Jewell Zeller partners with artist Carrie DeBacker to create a multimodal work that weaves together themes of ecofeminism, colonization, astronomy, medicine, biology, and mental-health, among other things.